Catching Fire

Collins, S., & Parisi, E. (2013). Catching fire. Broadway, New York: Scholastic.

Catching fire starts off six months after Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark defy the Hunger Games previous rules and become the first pair of tributes to win the games. Katness and Peeta are hailed as victors and must play out the roles of lovers that where developed during the 74^th games.  President Snow meets with Katniss and lets her know that her move of attempting to eat the berries with Peeta was seen as too rebellious and he fears that she could cause an uprising with the districts. Snow tells Peeta that Katness must convince everyone that she is truly in love with Peeta, so that the attempted suicide is not viewed as a rebellious act.  If she convinces everyone of their true love, Snow will spare the family of Katniss. A gesture of three middle fingers held in the air, and the whistling of the mockingjay tune starts to unify people and ends up with an old man being shot during one of the visits that Katniss and Peeta are having at District 12.  Peeta and Katniss get engaged and it causes an uprising in District 8.  The grounds of the games end up being set up like a clock. Each hour has a different danger. Some of the tributes begin to work as a team and the group rigs a way to get out of the games. They attach wire to a tree that gets struck by lightning and they shoot an arrow up into the sky which is actually formed by a series of panels. This act causes an explosion. Katniss gets knocked out by the explosion, and is taken away. She wakes to Johanna stabbing her arm and thinks that she is being attacked, when in fact, Johanna is removing a tracking device that was placed in Katniss. A full-scale rebellion is taking place against the Capital, and Show.  Katniss is not informed of the plan that unfolds to end the games, or of the rebellion because they fear that it is too dangerous to inform her. She finds out that Peeta has been captured by the Capital, and loses her will to live. She stops eating and speaking. Gale ends her state of depression when he tells her that District 12 no longer exists because it has been bombed.   The appropriate age for this novel is 12- adulthood or from 7^th grade and up. I love this book because it has romance, hope, despair, humanity all in one.  Once you are done reading this entire series, I would recommend you read Divergent.  It is a sci-fi thriller as well.  I recommend you watch the movies as well, but read the books first.  As a teacher, I would have my students compare the movie to the book.  They would create a presentation and present it.  This is a fantasy and science fiction.  The characters are in the future in an environment that doesn’t exist.  They can manipulate the game grounds by computer software in a remote location.  The three themes in this story are love, survival, and rebellion.  There is a love triangle between Katness, Peeta, and Gale.  Survival is the goal in the hunger games.  Rebellion takes place outside of the games between the districts and the capital.